Jean Lee (Lecturer, Language and Communication Centre) and research team awarded under the 4th MOE TRF Grant Call
Ms Lee Choong Peng, Jean (Lecturer, Language and Communication Centre) has been awarded under the 4th MOE TRF Grant Call (2018 TRF Grant Call) as Co-PI for the project “Fusing Communication Skills and Engineering Knowledge: A Co-teaching Program”. The PI is Asst. Prof Chan Wai Lee from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE), and the project is a cross-faculty and inter-disciplinary collaboration.
Fusing Communication Skills and Engineering Knowledge: A Co-teaching Program
Abstract
The learning of communication skills, such as speaking and writing, is essential in preparing engineering students to become competent professionals at the workplace. Engineering education that steers towards a more cross-disciplinary, comprehensive, and holistic approach enables students to break free from a stovepipe mentality to better adapt skills across disciplines and collaborate in teams to solve problems and make decisions. The co-teaching program, which utilizes team-based learning (TBL) and task-based instructions (TBI), provides such a cross-disciplinary learning platform for both engineering knowledge and communication skills to be learnt as a whole.
The aim of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of such a co-teaching program to help students to learn about communication skills in the context of an engineering classroom, as well as the students’ perception on the effectiveness of the program in improving their learning outcome. Using the true experimental research method, this study seeks to quantify and study the impact of a co-teaching program as an intervention strategy to improve the learning outcome of students in speaking and writing via pre- and post-tests.
Overall, this research plugs a gap due to the limited empirical studies on a teaching approach that integrates co-teaching, TBL, and TBI. This research is significant because it provides an evidence-based insight into fusing different disciplines to create a more holistic learning experience for students.